Composer. He was noted for his darkly atmospheric music for Hollywood noir films and psychological dramas, and later for his majestic scores for historical epics. Rozsa won Academy Awards for "Spellbound" (1945), "A Double Life" (1947), and "Ben-Hur" (1959), out of 16 nominations. His other credits include "Lydia" (1941), "Jungle Book" (1942), "Sahara" (1943), "Double Indemnity" (1944), "A Song to Remember" (1945), "The Lost Weekend" (1945), "The Killers" (1946), "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946), "Brute Force" (1947), "The Naked City" (1948), "Kiss the Blood Off My Hands" (1948), "Madame Bovary" (1949), "Criss Cross" (1949), "Adam's Rib" (1949), "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950), "Quo Vadis" (1951), "Ivanhoe" (1952), "Julius Caesar" (1953), "Lust for Life" (1956), "El Cid" (1961), "King of Kings" (1961), "The V.I.P.s" (1963), "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" (1970), "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" (1973), "Fedora" (1978), "Time After Time" (1979) and "Eye of the Needle" (1981). Rozsa was born in Budapest, Hungary, and studied music in Leipzig, Paris, and London. He began scoring films in England for producer and fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda, among them "The Divorce of Lady X" (1938) and "The Four Feathers" (1939). In 1940 he accompanied Korda to Hollywood and won attention (and his first Oscar nomination) for "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940). Throughout his movie career Rosza composed concert music and in 1953 he wrote a Violin Concerto for Jascha Heifetz. In his last film score, the noir parody "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982), Rozsa gently spoofed his 1940s style. Interestingly, his single best-known melody isn't normally attributed to him, and became famous by accident. For the hit men in "The Killers" Rozsa devised a suitably threatening four-note motif. A few years later, composer Walter Schumann inadvertently used this motto at the beginning of his title music for Jack Webb's tv cop show, "Dragnet". When the similarities were pointed out to Rozsa, he filed suit. Schumann retained sole credit for the "Dragnet Theme" while agreeing to pay Rozsa half the royalties for it. The rest is pop culture history, as Rozsa's portentous little tune became a joking symbol for deadpan authority.